Jasmunzel

Chapter 1: You May Now Kiss My Ass.

If you can't fly, then run, if you can't run, then walk, if you can't walk, then crawl, but whatever you do, you have to keep moving forward.

                                           -Martin Luther King Jr

_____________________

SNOW had encrusted the ground outside the little vintage coffee shop. My earnest expression almost as brisk as the weather. Danny stood by the coffee machine, bending against the bench, dullness strikes in her green eyes, staring at the overflowing cup of latte.

It's still, just our soothing breathing strumming against the heated air. With every day, our pay has diminished along with our amount of customers.

"Do you reckon someone is going to come in?" Asks Danny in a delicate voice.

I don't respond, partially because I know that someone wouldn't venture into our crumbling coffee shop, partly because I didn't feel like talking.

Danny laments and grabs a cloth from under the bench, making her way towards a table and wiping it once again, despite that it if it weren't for the dusky lighting, it would be twinkling.

I play with my pen, doodling miniature houses and designs, exercising the abilities I have acquired at Chicago University.

I had formerly lived in the heart of New York, with a family of five, two sisters, my dad, and mom.

I had never appreciated the streets thickened with sin and untold molestation. I have never found the tall buildings, looking as though the slightest collision could result in them toppling over the heavily trafficked streets even the slightest bit appealing.

I was a regular girl, I did what my parents wanted me to do. Dad's a tycoon, working eighteen hours a day, at first it was to provide to our struggling family, but once vaccinating the drug of dollar bills into his popping azure veins, he had become addicted to wealth.

Ignorant to my mother's sickness.

At first, it just started with recurrent nose bleeds, then she began to feel chilly all the time, and that wasn't because she was reveling in Dad's shadow, he was never around anyway. She was a stout woman, but she had started to grow fainter, we had presumed it was just a cold or the flu.

My sister, Scarlett, at the time, was a senior in Highschool, she was a grade A student, always conquering the hearts of infinite teachers. She struggled between taking care of Mom and doing well with her grades.

She went from 90s to 70s.

I remember the day as clear as a midsummer sky, I had just begun freshman year. Sitting composedly in class, playing with my friends, frolicking with them. I was happy, unenlightened of my mother's fate, but it sunk when our principal walked into our classroom. His face pale, behind him, my Aunt, distended eyes made me tremble.

He hadn't needed to gesture for me to come, he hadn't needed to tell my Spanish teacher to dismiss me, I had already dashed out of the classroom into the welcoming arms of my sobbing aunt.

"She'll live," They told me

"They'll get rid of the cancer," They said.

What they didn't tell me, was that I would be attending the woman who had loved me so dearly, the woman that sung me songs when I couldn't sleep, the woman that held my air back when I was sick. The woman I embraced whenever I felt dejected or going through a panic attack,

I would be attending her entombment.

The little song of the bells woke me from my daydream, Danny stood up rapidly a professional posture crawling on her frame.